So the magic hit an already rockin local band last night, they were all on it, the crowd was in it, my smokin firefighter of a date got her first taste of rock, the club staff obviously knew their way around Patrone and margueritas, and then two of four cats got out before I had coffee this morning,I have dew and pond mud up to my calves, so instead of trying to decipher this, Ima cut to the chase and if it doesn't fly, try again tomorrow.
Close your eyes.
Imagine 3 power amps, analog inputs. One more, with digital ins. Four sets of speakers. Speaker sets 1 and 2 are echoed to headphone outs 1 and 2.
Four identical mixers, just upstream from the power rack. Mixer A feeds speakers 1, left and right, Mixer B > speaker set 2, etc.
Decide which speakers you want to listen to. For fun, we'll say speakers 1, left and right, and/or phones 1, left and right, since they're the same. Set all faders on mixers B. C, and D to infinity, off, zero, bottom of the throw.
On tab 1/2, or mixer A, fade up what you want to hear to unity, fade mains to unity, all others to infinity, enjoy life! If, and only if, you want to change and listen to other speakers, set all faders on this mixer to zero, and fade up the inputs, hardware, software or both, on the mixer/tab that corresponds to the new set of speakers.
Each mixer feeds and controls one stereo pair. Only fade up what you need to, leave all other faders on all other boards, at infinity.
That's the simple case.
Before going one step further, I want to modify this. A well set up mono, hardware mixer, is not going to give you your best sound, with the mains at unity, and more than one channel fader anywhere above infinity. One mono main fader at unity, one channel input at unity. One mono main fader at unity, with two hot inputs, both the channel ins want to be at -3db each. Otherwise you are trying to use a mixer as a power amp. This again is a simple case, it depends on exactly how your mixer is wired, and it may or may not translate to the stereo output imaginary software mixers we are discussing here. This is old school stuff, I haven't discussed this with anyone since Marty McCann and Peavey HDH stacks driven by CS series power, ruled the known universe. I'm not sure exactly where you're going to find the info on this, but the point is made. If you hear distortion, but your meters look good, look at how many multiples of out faders you have to math up to get the number of used in faders and pull 3 db for each multiple. If this doesn't work, call Marty and whoever wrote the software.
Now, you have one mixer, amp, and speaker pair in use, and that one board is properly set up to unity gain, and, you have gone back to your individual signal sources and set them to knock at the top of the yellow in your meter bridge. We'll call that "calibrated unity", and for right now, we're using interface outs 1 and 2, and tab 1 or mixer A.
Lets say this is your control room mix, what you will hear when you press "play" on your daw, plus any live instruments that feel like chiming in, that you've faded up on mixer A. All is good in the control room.
But what about your singer in the vocal booth? You can pipe her a pair of cans, fed off headphone 1, mixer A, tab one, and she'll hear the same thing you hear in the control room. You try this and right off, she wants "more me". Soon as you do that, she's so loud it drowns out everything else. Something has to give, and here's how you do it.
Feed her cans from phones out 2. Set up her mix on tab 2, mixer B, whatever you want to call it, setting all relevant faders to unity, (as modified in the "Peavey" paragraph), and all other faders on that tab to infinity.
Perfect, she hears one mix, you hear another, all is well...
...except...
...she want verb on "more me". Kk, no sweat, you dial it in using the FTU's onboard effects, and....
...she HATES IT!
"What kinda of studio IS THIS? What is this jank-ass reee-verb you're putting on me...dude, springs went out in 60s, I want my LEXICON!"
And you just happen to have a brand new Lexi 7500G, (G stands for GOLD darlin!) fresh out of the box but...how you gonna patch this, and quick, before she busts a gasket and both cords, done for the day?
Here it is...start looking at a THIRD mixer, but really, in this case, bypass mixer 3 and go straight to 4, cuz...now yer gonna take advantage of those SPDIF ports, both ways, in and out, and yer gonna send her "vocal" out the mains on mixer/tab 4 to the real reverb unit, and bring it back in on Britney's board, (tab 2, remember?) and save one whole DA generation for your use later on.
Finally, if somebody else wants yet another mix, or hardware effects send/return, you have mixer/tab 3 to work with, and you can deal with the difference between line and phone levels and the fact that you only get one pair of digi outs, cuz yer the man!
Got any aspirin?
post edited by Jay Tee 4303 - 2013/09/14 10:42:01